The cheese is slipping off the cracker all over the place...

From the CRTC to Doug Ford calling out judges and Mark Carney comparing Alberta to Brexit, there are a lot of bad decisions.

I’ve been obsessing over bad government decisions of late.

The CRTC decisions that I wrote about last week here and here. These decisions will hike your monthly fees for streaming services, weaken Canadian broadcasters and start a new front on the trade war not just with Donald Trump but virtually every Democrat.

When the Online Streaming Act, the bill that allows for these dumb decisions, was introduced the Biden administration warned Canada that this was a violation of CUSMA. This is an attack on Hollywood and Silicon Valley, two parts of the American economy that are still tied tightly to the Democrat Party.

It also pisses off the Trump Republicans, so there you have it, everyone in America will hate us for this.

It was dumb to announce these changes last week. Dumber still for the Carney government not to immediately step in and say that these new charges on American streamers would be paused as we review CUSMA and negotiate a new trade deal.

That would have been a move that would keep a card in reserve.

We didn’t do that.

As I have mentioned previously, this is also a really bad decision for Canadian broadcasters and streamers because it drives up their costs even more, weakens them, makes them less competitive and more expensive.

Why?

All to make sure a government policy of subsidizing Canadian content creation is funded by companies rather than taxpayers. We pay either way, why not just make it more efficient and make a direct subsidy.

No, I’m not in favour of direct subsidies but that’s better than adding layers or bureaucracy to the process to make it less efficient.

Give the column on how this hurts Canadian broadcasters a read. No one else is telling this story.

This decision really has me going though…

The court decision last week by Justice Micheal Gibson has me fuming.

There is so much wrong with this decision from his appeal to international law, non-binding United Nations reports and even federal statutes - which are not constitutional documents - to try and bend the meaning of the Charter.

This guy tried to say being homeless is the same as race, gender, skin colour when it comes to discrimination.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford was asked repeatedly about using the notwithstanding clause on this and he didn’t rule it out.

I took to video to do my own rant about this decision and how bad it is.

As I detail in my column for the Toronto Sun, this is a dangerous decision that must be overturned.

This isn’t just a bad decision that we can live with and look the other way. This is a decision that fundamentally changes the definition of Charter rights.

Our Charter, flawed as it is, is a collection of negative rights. That means it details what the government can’t do to you, it is your protection from government overreach.

This decision is an attempt to establish what are called positive rights. In this scenario the government must provide you with certain things and under the scenario laid out by this decision on a homeless encampment, it would mean judges deciding social policy and what the government must spend and how.

It would eradicate democracy.

This case is not about homelessness; it’s about whether courts are able constitutionalize policy preferences by importing non-binding international legal theory into the Charter.

If I were in charge, judges would not be citing non-Canadian legal sources.

Carney compares Alberta separation to Brexit…

This may not go the way Mark Carney expected.

On Monday he was asked about the idea of a question on Alberta separation going forward this fall and warned it could be like Brexit. Carney was famously against Brexit, which to me says he was on the wrong side of history.

I would argue that Brexit, since 2016, has been good for the U.K. while he would argue the opposite.

Since leaving the EU, Britain has seen stronger economic growth, wage increases, trade imbalances have shifted in their favour and more. Still, there was Carney warning Alberta separation could be bad like Brexit.

From CTV:

“I will make the following observation, though, about the question, and this is an observation from experience,” Carney told reporters Monday. “In these separation issues, it is often advanced that: ‘Vote for this, and it’s a free option’; ‘Vote for this, and we will strengthen your hand in future negotiation.’”

“That is a very dangerous bluff,” Carney added, before pointing to his time as governor of the Bank of England during Brexit, when the United Kingdom narrowly voted to leave the European Union.

“They’re still, 10 years later, trying to undo what people didn’t think they were voting for,” Carney also said, referencing Brexit.

If he’s telling residents of Alberta that leaving Canada will be like Brexit, he should stop talking. Because if that’s his message, then he’s telling them things will be better by leaving.

I should also point out that Carney was on the losing end of that debate and campaign.